‘Mimi’ review: Kriti Sanon internalises her character’s plight with grit and grace

“To be a mother is the greatest gift of life,” is cunning yet mean-no-harm driver Bhanu’s (Pankaj Tripathi) cue line for luring small-town Bollywood aspirant Mimi into the unknown world of surrogacy. She is tall, a gracious dancer, and a self-proclaimed ‘threat’ to all the Bollywood actresses she daydreams of dethroning as and when her lady luck shines. But, her Mumbai contact leaves no stone unturned to let the feisty belle know filmy dreams don’t come cheap: five lakh rupees for a photoshoot with Dabbo Ratnani and eight to ten lakh rupees for making her ‘viral dance video’ with T-Series.

At 25, Mimi is restless for her big break and hard-pressed for money to realise it. “Beej unka, khet tumhara (their seed, your field),” Bhanu assures Mimi and thus begins her journey of surrogacy with an American couple. A few naive choices, a ghastly revelation and some hilarious satirical settings later, the titular character ends up with a protruding belly and some broken ties, and dreams. 

‘Mimi’—from outward observations—is an ode to all those faceless mothers who are often abandoned by their firaang bailouts in heartland India. 
 

Director Laxman Utekar’s take on surrogacy is poignancy personified, laced with humour and socially relevant issues serving as undercurrents. What sticks out in this Hindi adaptation of the Marathi film ‘Mala Aai Vhhaychy!’ is that Utekar’s Mimi—despite a conventional setting with Rajasthan as its backdrop—never reaches out for a saviour to rescue nor is she portrayed as a damsel-in-distress even in the film’s darkest sequences. The character is chalked out as a fearless, headstrong feminist: a trope that the Indian audience needs to some getting used to, but is a welcome change nonetheless. 

‘Mimi’ dabbles between surrogacy and its repercussions, and the taboo around single motherhood in the country. It, also, briefly touches upon adoption and fair-skin obsession that is rampant in India even to this day. The hindrance lies not in the fact that Utekar has brought to light these glaring issues on a global platform like Netflix—frankly, it’s the need of the hour!—but the hindrance lies in the fact that he has crammed in too many subtexts all at once. The intent is noble, but the route taken to reach that road is bumpy and superficial. 

Over the years, Kriti Sanon has exhibited drastic changes—all positive—in her on-screen image and has swapped naachna-gaana parts for rounded, meaningful roles like ‘Luka Chuppi’, for instance. ‘Mimi’, quite understandably, is her attempt to establish herself as a standalone actor, not just a pretty heroine. The formula works for Sanon, mostly. In summarising her depiction of the varied shades of her Mimi, two scenes come to mind. The first one is right after the birth of her baby, when she says nothing at all and emotes through twitching her eye brows and a blank expression that gives away her internal monologue—there wasn’t one, by the way.  The second one is when a dramatic background score deafens the viewers while a dejected Sanon dabs unflattering amount of talcum powder—again, a subtle small-town reference—on her face and screams out in pain: for having lost a shot at life, for what could have been. In that regard, Kriti Sanon has arrived. 

Manoj Pahwa, Supriya Pathak and Pankaj Tripathi have their moments of glory in patches like any good actor would in a character-actor part. But, were these actors given the kind of parallel roles they deserved to elevate the script? No. Is that a pity? Well, yes. 

It would be criminal to discredit Marathi actress Sai Tamhankar’s sincere rendition of the docile and demure Shama. If anything, Sai adds optimal amount of gravitas to the otherwise—occasionally—haphazard narrative.

‘Mimi’ chooses humour and irony to tackle the grave issue of would-be surrogate parents chickening out on simple, unsuspecting Indian girls from deep pockets of the nation. The tone of this dramedy makes one wonder: If an outrageously good-looking and fiercely independent girl can fall prey to the trappings of ‘a rented womb’, what chances do all those other real, not-so-fortunate Mimis have in this brutal world?